Militants launched a suicide and grenade attack on Kabul airport early Monday, taking over a nearby building which security forces attempted to storm as blasts and gunfire rocked the Afghan capital. Loud explosions and bursts of small-arms fire erupted for at least two hours and were continuing, with the US embassy sounding its "duck and cover" alarm and its loudspeakers warning that the alarm was not a drill.

Militants on Wednesday launched a two-hour suicide and gun attack on a Red Cross office in Jalalabad city, east Afghanistan, killing at least one guard, officials said. The assault was the latest in a series of high profile, co-ordinated attacks as insurgents pile pressure on the US-backed government ahead of the withdrawal of 100,000 NATO combat troops by the end of next year. "A suicide attacker first detonated himself at the gate of the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) compound," Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for the interior ministry, told AFP.

A roadside bomb killed four US soldiers in south Afghanistan on Tuesday, officials said, the latest fatalities for the NATO-led coalition which is winding down after 12 years of fighting. The soldiers died in the volatile province of Kandahar, where five US troops were killed by a similar improvised explosive device targeting a vehicle on May 4. Kandahar is a hotbed of insurgent activity, with large areas under the control of Taliban militants who were ousted from power in Kabul in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

A roadside bomb killed five US troops in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said, in the biggest attack on NATO-led forces since the Taliban launched their "spring offensive" a week ago. "Five American soldiers were killed at about noon when their armoured vehicle hit a powerful roadside mine in Maiwand district," Kandahar province's police chief General Abdul Razeq told AFP.